Let us now praise Japanese monsters

Hi everybody, it’s Tim, using the impending release of Pacific Rim as a bald-faced excuse to talk about one of the greatest guilty pleasures in the whole of cinema: THE GIANT MONSTER MOVIE.

Guillermo del Toro’s extravagant, costly tentpole picture is, of course, a well-publicized love letter to the Japanese genre known as kaiju eiga: the giant monster movies born from the iconic 1954 Godzilla. These quickly descended from the relative sincerity and social messaging of that film (or the contemporaneous American production Them!) into trashy action films that further descended into silly matinee pictures, borne on the wings of the legendarily awful Baby Godzilla, and his soullessly googly eyes. [more...]

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Emmy AND Oscar-Nominated Documentaries

The eligibility of documentaries for awardage from both that lusted after winged woman (Emmy) and the coveted naked man (Oscar) is a labyrinthine maze from which we would never exit were we to foolishly enter. In fact, someone needs to make a documentary about THAT to sort it all out. Documentaries leave strange crumbs all over both the big and small screens on their long walking journey through often complicated and extremely protacted "releases".

I bring this up because a portion of the Emmy nominations were announced today (like The Grammys there are hundreds of categories) in the non-fiction fields of news and documentary. I was surprised, for example, to see Semper Fi: Always Faithful, The Loving Story and We Were Here as nominees. You may recall they were all Oscar finalists (though not nominees) back in 2011 and now they're up for 2013 Emmys! Actual nominees from that Oscar year show up too, particularly those from the Best Documentary Short category. I thought we'd highlight a few categories in case you've seen any of these films. They might be familiar to you even if you spend more time in theaters than in front of your television. 

OUTSTANDING INFORMATIONAL PROGRAMMING - LONG FORM

• Semper Fi: Always Faithful -MSNBC Documentaries
• The Interrupters -Frontline PBS (read our interview with director Steve James)
• The Suicide Plan -Frontline PBS
• My Reincarnation - POV PBS
• Wish Me Away - Showtime 

OUTSTANDING HISTORICAL PROGRAMMING - LONG FORM

Awesome cinephile Vito Russo with fellow AIDS Activist Elizabeth Taylor

• The Loving Story -HBO Documentary Films
• Vito -HBO Documentary Films (read our interview with director Jeffrey Schwartz. Vito Russo wrote the groundbreaking book "The Celluloid Closet" which is all about the problems of LGBT presence in Hollywood films. That book and his AIDS activism are his legacy. This doc was also nominated for "Best Research")
• Jesse Owens - American Experience PBS
• We Were Here - Independent Lens PBS [Available on Netflix Instant Watch]
• Nostalgia for the Light -POV PBS

And there are several other categories of non fiction programming too like "arts and cultural, science, and economic" . Finally, all the fields seem to unite under the umbrella category "Best Documentary" which has six nominations, all of them previous Oscar nominees or finalists except for Nostalgia for the Light, which nevertheless had a movie awards presence winning Best Documentary at the European Film Awards and winning a WGA nomination as well. That said I should note that this is no guarantee that how the docs aired on television is the same way they aired in cinema since documentaries can shape shift as they switch mediums and details of their stories continue to emerge. Some get much longer and are divvied up into segments for news programs. 

BEST DOCUMENTARY

• Project NIM -HBO Documentary Films
• Saving Face - HBO Documentary Films
• The Loving Story - HBO Documentary Films
• The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom - HBO Documentary Films
• Hell and Back Again - Independent Lens -PBS 
• Nostalgia for the Light - POV PBS

Do you like docs and if so have you seen any of these films?

P.S. Of Note: 60 Minutes won a nomination for "Outstanding Interview" for their profile of Steven Spielberg during Lincoln's run. If winged Emmy is anything like naked Oscar, it won't win its category. 

P.P.S. The Emmy nominations most people talk about when they talk about Emmys are the ones that will be announced a week from today on July 18th. We'll talk about those soon!

The Girl Who Played with Calvin.

Jose here. Over the last few weeks it seems that I can't turn anywhere without seeing an actress I love in a new ad campaign or fashion magazine cover...there's J.Law and Kidman and J.Lo (oh my!) and now my beloved Rooney Mara has teamed up with Calvin Klein to sell their new fragrance called Downtown. Now, before you all disregard me and my obsession with Rooney, keep in mind that the ad was directed by none other than David Fincher and even though it pretty much features Rooney being Rooney (except she wants to play with puppies and children and she even gives us a toothy smile for once) it also has some unique Fincher-ian touches, especially with all the movies it pays tribute to.

On my tenth viewing I've spotted references to Roman Holiday (the plot), Singin' in the Rain (the rain! Also, the dancing, the studio settings and the dress), Notting Hill (the toothy smile!), Some Lie It Hot (the dress and Bus Stop moment), Cosmopolis (the limo, the isolation), Manhattan (the bridge) and more importantly Madonna's videos for Vogue (well, everything but especially the makeup brush!) and Bad Girl (the cinematography, the haunting melancholy and the opening scene in the cafe).

But this will only keep me content so long while I wait for a sequel to Dragon Tattoo... sigh.

How many references can you spot? Do you crave a Dragon Tattoo sequel as much as I do? Do you wish the ad was set to Petula Clark instead of Yeah Yeah Yeahs?

Gone Girl Got Ben

JA from MNPP here with some hot-off-the-presses movie news - multiple Oscar winner Ben Affleck (I trust I'm not alone in gagging a little at that phrase) has just signed on to play the lead (of sorts) in David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's hit novel Gone Girl. 

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You can't really even talk about the novel without diving into spoilers for it, so I'm not going to even try. You can read that elsewhere. I'll just say I found the book to be an engrossing page-turner when I read it last year, and if you haven't read it yet it's perfect Summer reading - not so demanding you'll feel guilty getting sand in the creases, but you won't want to stay in the water too long and so you won't get sunburned because you'll want to get back to it.

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That said I'm not a fan of Affleck the actor - I thought he was absolutely terrible in Argo, enough to keep what I found to otherwise be a solid entertainment well off my favorite movies of last year list. And so I'm pretty bummed that Fincher's choosing to work with him, but I suppose bankability wins out.

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Any fans of the book? What do we think of Affleck for Nick? And who would you cast in the, ahem, other roles?

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Best Shot: Dead Ringers, Conjoined in Shadow

Hit Me With Your Best Shot happens each Wednesday night and usually spills on over into Thursday morning. Next week (July 17th) we're all looking at the practically perfect "Mary Poppins." This week: David Cronenberg's masterpiece...

Dead Ringers (1988)

For the uninitiated Dead Ringers (1988) is the 'Saga' of 'The Fabulous Mantle Brothers,' twin gynecologists Beverly (Jeremy Irons) and Elliott (Jeremy Irons again) and the 'destructive force' Claire (Genevieve Bujold) that separates them. I've put the air quotes in the synopsis since that's how Elliott, the more theatrical and dominant twin, and the elder by a few minutes, describes the movies from its insides. I don't want to spoil the movie if you haven't yet seen it but if you haven't (*cough* 25 years later) get on that! If you ask me Jeremy Irons deserved the Oscar he wasn't nominated for for this career topping performance(s). 

My earliest favorite movie was The Parent Trap (1961) which I watched on television countless times as a child. Though I realize it's hardly a unique fascination, twins have always done it for me. There's so much to explore and even more to never understand about the possible psychologies of two distinct people who are, genetically, the same person. Though I've seen David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers about four times now I confess that I usually have trouble differentiating Beverly and Elliott. But not this time. Visually, the clarity of their separateness, even though they're loathe to experience it as such, was riveting. Even the old trick of dividing the same actor on two sides of a clearly divided frame doesn't even feel like a sad necessity but the point.

Cronenberg's direction is so assured that you can pick a corker of a shot in virtually every scene as the Best Shot participants have done. Any number of shots will reveal top notch production design (also robbed of Oscar attention) by turning half the spaces into something out of a medical illustration, with intricate lines, weirdly sterile immobility and sleek curves and flat color. But this time through the shot that resonated most was simpler. And I don't even feel like it's cheating that I've chosen twin shots, one of Elliott and one of Beverly, which I've displayed in reverse chronological order. 

These shots are close in proximity in the narrative and each features one of the Mantle Twins reacting to Claire talking to him about the other Mantle Twin. Elliott (up top) is angry that Claire has entered the picture and attempts to intimidate her and seduce her but she won't be cowed. Nevertheless he's too cool and too controlled to lose his composure. The shadow only augments his sinister handsomeness, like a flattering accomplice in seduction and plotting. But Beverly, more emotional and more fluid, who so yearns for separation that he hides Elliot from Claire until this very scene, is also terrified by it. In this simple but brilliant shot he has been found out. Claire has uttered Elliott's name. This shadow neither conceals nor flatters; it merely wipes out his identity. Who is he without Elliott anyway?

For 12 other takes on this movie, please check out the rich array of articles provided by this week's Best Shot club in the visual index.